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Discovered by my no doubtly iniquitous means of surfing teh interwebs and researching blogging as a a creative outlet project, I stumbled across Twitter. I never really paid any attention to it, thought it was much a-do about only a little, but in some logical space, this so called ‘Twitter’ just seemed to keep popping up everywhere. It first started falling into my routine with my iPod touch, installing a nifty application called ‘Twinkle’.
Now, I’m not app heavy, use and keep what I need and somehow this one application just stuck around for a while.
And Twitter, incase you’ve been hiding under a rock in the general world of web 2.0, it is micro blogging that’s well… “so hot right now”…in the colloquial Gen Y-er terms.

But regardless of popularity, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was witnessing some kind of Star Trek style culture, whereby people are infact known by their clever twitter personnas and leave behind -well, everything else.

So, the point you ask?
There is something really interesting when it comes to understanding the mindset that drives some people to pursue the untested, emerging social networking platforms, when to most, the reason for doing so might be unclear and a waste of time, when you have things that already work for you.
First you need to understand the mindset of technology adapters, or bleeding edgers or tweeps and whathaveyou.
It starts with myspace, facebook and moves onto blogging, photo blogging, RSS feeds and technorati to name a few. Tied somewhere into that, you’ll find an unbridled passion for everything social, down to the search for something a little more left of center than the standard information generation.

So I had heard something was going on and it turns out, hey- it had been for quite sometime already. A whole lot of something. Better late to the party than never I say.
Since connecting to this highly addictive world of Twitter, I’ve discovered some interesting things.
Unlike the relatively static experiences on LinkedIn, facebook* or WordPress, twitter is alive and buzzing with real time conversations. It’s amazing what you can say in 140 characters or less (micro blogging needs a defining characteristic, and Twitter’s creators somehow settled on 140 characters as a limit) you’ll get everything from “I need a coffee” to “anyone seen Google’s latest acquisition with video chat?”

The second thing I discovered was that people are paying close attention to everything you say. In fact, when you ‘follow’ someone on twitter, another description could almost be stalking in the real world. But not on Twitter. The third twitter point I must share, was the process of explaining to my friends and others, exactly what twitter was and why it mattered. All they could muster was ‘that sounds pointless!’Yeowch. The truth can hurt.

It might sound a little ethereal, but eventually you get plugged into the wavelength of Like-minded people. The revelation is that Twitter has demonstrated that social networking can be-wait for it- social.
Amazing I know.
Looking for advice on a broken mac, or even asking questions on a new business challenge, just as your twitter followers, the suggestions can come flooding in within minutes.
The real shocking thing about business is that it’s social, and that’s where it ties in. Relationships matter- relationships with customers, clients or faceless corporate entities. Regardless how positive or negative those experiences can be.

So for now, I’ll keep using it, finding ‘tweeps’, networking and socially relating in something a little new and untouched by the grubby hands of mainstream. I don’t consider myself a bleeding edger, but I’ll roll with it for now. It’s a bit like a self assured credibility you adopt because you used to watch that artist or band performing in lounges and pubs before they were mainstream.